Best College Football Teams for the Money

Our list of the Best College Football Teams for the Money ranks the ten teams that spent the least per win this season. We looked at members of the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC because those schools are eligible for an automatic qualification to a Bowl Championship Series bowl game (Fiesta, Orange, Rose, and Sugar Bowls). We feel that the Automatic Qualifying (AQ) conferences are on a relatively even playing field, and are therefore more readily comparable.

We used the teams' total expenses in 2010, as reported to the Department of Education, to calculate their spending per game won this year. Average spending for the top ten teams was $1.5 million per game, even though total seasonal spending for teams on our list ranged from $9 million (Wake Forest) to $21 million (LSU). Every team on our list had a winning record in 2011 except for Wake Forest, which went 6-6 but was one of only two schools from an AQ conference to limit football expenses to under $10 million.